The Slide: A Novel Read Online Free Page B

your social life. You can fight it all you like, you can promise you’re just going to work there, that this isn’t a social thing. But it happens. Drinking at work segues into going out after work. And because you don’t know anything about what these new friends do when they’re not at work, you find it literally impossible to have a conversation outside of work that has anything to do with anything other than work. It’s one thing when it’s just two of you—because it is again literally impossible that you’re not going to end up dating or at least going home with at least one coworker—but when there’s a whole group of you somewhere, then it’s even worse, because now the only thing all of you have in common is the restaurant. And at some point the conversation deteriorates into a chorus of personal slander against whatever employees aren’t in attendance. Trust me. It will take over your life.”
    He was a sage. During the next couple hours we went from the table to the deck loungers to the couches inside the pool house. We spoke frequently enough that we never forgot we weren’t alone. The television was situated along the far wall, next to the fireplace, and there were two couches, both coffee-brown leather with blankets neatly tossed over their backs, and one love seat. In the free space between the kitchen and the couches was a wooden dining table with four hand-carved chairs. Stuart’s bedroom and the bath/changing room were in back. We watched the last half of a Cardinals victory over the Brewers, then went back outside.
    The sage walked to the pool’s edge and pointed at the water. “Vacuum is having the damnedest time figuring out that starfish.”
     
     
    The insomnia became something I could almost rely on, but not quite. There was the odd night when I slept like a normal human. Usually, though, I’d end up trapping two or three hours of sleep, just enough that I made it through the following day without falling over. There was little point even going through the bedtime motions. I undressed. I went horizontal. I cannot describe the full extent of breathing exercises I employed. I went to the bathroom and masturbated my brains out. Nothing worked. Over and over again I gave up, convinced that the only way I was going to find sleep was by quitting the search. Of course, this was just trying, one step removed.
    Several days passed without further word arriving from Audrey. Once or twice I sat in the new office and considered writing, but the lack of anything new to say combined with an image of her in some European Internet café—distracted, shrugging off whatever I managed to put into words, running out into Tuscan sun to explore the countryside by moped, laughing with Carmel about my feeble attempt to rectify, laughing always, Carmel laughing with those lips and teeth—made for a wicked deterrent. Also: the office looked out onto the garden, where my mother continued with a job I couldn’t possibly believe required such abundant continuation.
    I spent afternoons sitting at the pool while Stuart worked. Sometimes he paced; other times he buried his face in his palms. He made no mention of the apartment or Dutch elm disease, and I appreciated his continued stoicism. And at night, when cicadas screamed in Dolby Surround, he threw parties. Guests appeared out of darkness to stand around the pool, holding cans of Bud Light. Stuart had become friends with sets of employed couples who lived together with their dogs in two-bedroom houses they rented for less than any reasonable person would expect. I sat within the fruity nimbus of citronella and watched tight shirts stray up women’s backs when they bent to test pool water. I saw ponytails threaded through openings in pink Cardinals caps. I saw fingernails painted a sort of nacreous anticolor, all shiny and white-tipped. I tried not to stare.
    In the middle of it all, Edsel Denk was diving, and he was really fucking good at it. I watched him